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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made by boiling potato flour, vinegar, and seasonings, then folding in egg yolk, whipped egg white, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the potato flour, mustard, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Add water and both vinegars, then boil for two minutes.

Thicken the dressing

  1. Cool slightly, then add the egg yolk mixed with 1 teaspoon of water.

  2. Cook until thickened, but do not boil.

  3. Remove from heat and stir for a few minutes.

Finish

  1. Fold in the whipped egg white until combined.

  2. Once completely cool, gently fold in the whipped cream.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potato flour
Thickens the dressing as its starch swells when heated.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the dressing as it cooks gently.
Egg white
Whipped and folded in to lighten the texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, creamy body when whipped and folded in.
Malt vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the egg and cream.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened, but do not boil. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat, but if it gets too hot it scrambles and turns grainy. Stop cooking once the mixture thickens, and remove it from the heat.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, malt, vinegar, tarragon, egg, cream, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, malt, vinegar, tarragon, egg, cream, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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